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Melgund Township, Northwestern Ontario

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  • What is Placemaking?
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What is Placemaking?

Placemaking is about more than just putting up a new playground or building a recreation center. It's about thoughtfully designing and activating our public spaces to deepen the connection between people and their surroundings.
The Arts Incubator June 3, 2025
This spacious, yet currently somewhat bare, room presents a perfect opportunity for arts-based placemaking. Imagine this space transformed into a vibrant community hub through murals co-created by local youth, collaborative art installations, or even a flexible area for community theatre or dance workshops.

This spacious, yet currently somewhat bare, room presents a perfect opportunity for arts-based placemaking. Imagine this space transformed into a vibrant community hub through murals co-created by local youth, collaborative art installations, or even a flexible area for community theatre or dance workshops.

Shaping Communities Through Recreation and the Arts

Placemaking is about more than just building parks or facilities; it’s about intentionally shaping public spaces to deepen the connection between people and their environment. 

For recreation and parks professionals, this means evolving from being solely providers of programs to becoming active supporters of community-driven initiatives that foster healthier, more vibrant communities. This aligns directly with Goal 4: Supportive Environments in the Framework for Recreation in Canada (2024 Update), which aims to ensure physical and social environments encourage participation and build strong, caring communities. Supportive environments, as defined in the Framework, include the social infrastructure that promotes social connectedness, as well as the physical spaces we manage.

The beauty of placemaking lies in its accessibility: anyone can be a “placemaker,” initiating impactful changes that transform both private and public spaces. This concept is particularly meaningful for local, rural, Indigenous, and northern communities, where recreation spaces and programs can play a vital role in combating isolation and fostering connection. Placemaking also directly connects to Goal 2: Inclusion and Access by helping create spaces where all community members feel a sense of belonging.

“Placemaking, for us, is about bringing our stories, our hands, and our hearts into the spaces where we live,” said Eva Suluk, one of the Inuit artists and founding members of The Arts Incubator. “It’s how we transform a simple room into a place that truly feels like home, a reflection of our culture and our connections. It’s about more than just art; it’s about making our communities visible and strong.”

Tony Eetak is one of the youth artists involved in establishing The Arts Incubator.
Tony Eetak is one of the youth artists involved in establishing The Arts Incubator.

Tony Eetak, another of the youth artists and founding members of the program, added, “When we create art in our community spaces, it’s not just about making something beautiful. It’s about taking ownership, about putting our ideas out there. This idea of placemaking, it makes our voices heard and helps everyone feel like they belong, because we’re all part of building the programs, and the spaces together.”

The Power of Arts-Based Placemaking

Arts-based placemaking offers a powerful avenue for the recreation sector to support these goals. Art connects people across language, culture, and experience, providing a potent outlet for expression and building self-esteem and belonging.Imagine a community mural co-created by local youth, or a collaborative sculpture installation in a public park. These initiatives allow community members to reshape their surroundings, reflecting their identities and visions, building community pride, and giving them a voice. This isn’t just an add-on; it’s a central method for achieving deeper goals like well-being, belonging, and empowerment.

Consider programs like “Designing with Dignity” which uses arts-based methods to build connection, support youth leadership, and strengthen community-based arts and recreation. This initiative directly responds to challenges like isolation and limited opportunities often found in northern and rural areas. Similarly, projects such as “Our People Our Climate” utilize art and storytelling in community-engaged ways, sharing exhibitions and public presentations in diverse venues. 

These examples demonstrate how the recreation sector can collaborate with artists and community members to activate spaces, fostering social connectedness and cultural expression. Even leveraging existing community hubs, like recreation halls or community kitchens, for arts-based climate entrepreneurship and creative leadership showcases how spaces can be transformed into vibrant centres of activity.

Embracing a Placemaking Mindset

For practitioners, embracing placemaking means proactively looking for opportunities to support community-driven initiatives. It involves seeing parks, facilities, and even underutilized spaces—like an alley between buildings—as canvases for creative expression and social gathering. It requires rethinking traditional approaches, moving away from solely top-down programming, and finding ways to decentralize activities. The goal is to empower residents to initiate change and infuse life into their own neighbourhoods.

Think about how your community can leverage arts and creativity to transform public spaces and foster a stronger sense of belonging. What partnerships can you build with local artists, cultural groups, or neighbourhood associations to support placemaking initiatives that align with your recreation goals? Embracing a placemaking mindset, we can help build more connected, inclusive, and vibrant communities, one shared space at a time.

Summer Learning in Recreation

This summer, we’re diving deeper into critical topics for recreation professionals, focusing on effective program design and robust capacity building. A cornerstone of our learning journey is the Framework for Recreation in Canada (2024 Update). As we’ve seen with this short look at placemaking, the Framework offers invaluable guidance, providing principles and strategies that help us create more impactful and inclusive recreation opportunities. Throughout the coming weeks, we’ll continue to explore how its goals and strategic ideas can be applied directly to the challenges and opportunities faced by local, rural, Indigenous, and northern communities. Stay tuned for more insights as we work together to build stronger recreation sectors across Canada.

About the Author

The Arts Incubator

The Arts Incubator

Administrator

The Arts Incubator is a participatory arts collective and living lab, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario. It's a space where innovation and creativity thrive. It's latest iteration was launched in 2021 with funding and support from the Canada Council for the Arts Digital Greenhouse. Today, working with students and faculty from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, we fuse traditional and participatory media arts with artificial intelligence, music, storytelling and community-driven, land-based artist residencies to cultivate new voices and bold ideas. Whether through collaborative projects or immersive experiences, our small but vibrant community supports creators to explore, experiment, and connect. Join us at the intersection of artistry, technology, culture and community—where every moment is a new opportunity to create.

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NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO ARTS PROGRAMS

This platform, our Northwestern Ontario hub and programs have been made possible with support from the Ontario Arts Council Multi and Inter-Arts Projects Program. We gratefully acknowledge their funding and support in making the work we do possible.

Ontario Arts Council Multi and Inter-Arts Projects Program

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Arts Incubator and Art Borups Corners Collective was seeded with strategic arts innovation funding from the Canada Council for the Arts Digital Greenhouse and the Local Services Board of Melgund. We thank them for their investment, support and bringing the arts to life.

Canada Council for the Arts Digital Greenhouse Logo

SUPPORTING ARTS AND RECREATION

Borups Corners Arts and Recreation supports arts and recreation in Melgund Township, Northwestern Ontario as volunteer-driven Arts Collective.

Ontario Arts Council Multi and Inter-Arts Projects Program
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